The Green Bay School District will reverse its decision to plan and implement bus routes independently after parent complaints about long bus rides for students and inconsistent pickup and drop-off times in fall.

This school year, district officials took over managing bus routes from Lamers Bus Lines in an effort to create a more efficient system. But technical difficulties left some families unsure when, or where, their kids were supposed to board buses. Many also complained students traveled more than an hour on the bus.

District officials blamed its new software system for the troubles. A mass mailing to parents with children attending Green Bay public schools and some private Green Bay schools relied on the software, which did not pick up all email addresses in the school's system, according to spokeswoman Lori Blakeslee.

"People weren't getting the right drop-off and pickup times from the software," she said.

Officials agreed to return some of the work to Lamers next year to smooth over the issues. The district also has purchased a fleet of vans to help transport some students, including homeless students who must be transported to and from their original school free of charge according to the federal McKinney-Vento Act.

The district fielded many phone calls from parents as the new system rolled out in fall, Blakeslee said. The district found some of its new routes kept kids on buses longer than the maximum of one hour and 15 minutes set by Green Bay School Board policy.

School administrators said they will continue to work jointly with the bus service.

"Our goal will still be around efficiency," said Terri Willems, executive director for elementary education for the Green Bay district. "Routing has always been a collaborative process and will continue to be."

Earlier this year, Blakeslee said the district's transportation department sent bus route information by email in batches of a thousand. The emails, however, were too big to move through the system and never made it to families' inboxes.

Families were sent either an email or a letter to notify them of their bus routes, pickup and drop-off locations, she said. Next year, the district plans to send notifications via both traditional mail and email.

The district noted bus drivers had already printed off pickup and drop-off locations before the software update eliminated some addresses and became confused when parents called about changes, she said.

As the week progressed, transportation staff made several changes, such as moving and adding pickup or drop-off locations to address safety concerns, adding buses to shorten routes and address overcrowding, and resetting pickup times so kids would not be arriving at school too early, she said.

— pzarling@pressgazettemedia.com or follow her on Twitter @PGPattiZarling